Quick Start

Start Using HAI in 15 Minutes

15 minutes total — five steps, no special tools required

HAI works with any project management tool, any team size, any domain. You don't need our software. You don't need permission. You need 15 minutes and a willingness to be honest about who did what.

Understand the Three Work Modes

1 min

AI-led — AI does the work, human ensures quality. Use for well-defined tasks with clear specs. Example: adding a standard CRUD endpoint.

Collaborative — Human and AI work together iteratively. Use for feature development, design decisions, problem-solving. Example: designing a new dashboard.

Human-led — Human decides, AI supports. Use for strategy, client relationships, novel decisions. Example: pricing your services.

Tip: This isn’t a hierarchy. Different work legitimately needs different modes. A single project might use all three at different phases.

Assess Your First Piece of Work

2 min

Work Mode — Who leads? AI / Human & AI / Human

Involvement — How much human attention? Light / Engaged / Intensive

Size — How big? S / M / L / XL

Spec Quality — How well-defined? High / Medium / Low

Risk — How predictable? Low / Medium / High

Confidence — How well understood? Low / Medium / High

Tip: Pick something you’re working on right now. Don’t overthink it — the assessment takes 2 minutes and you can refine it later.

Tag It in Your PM Tool

2 min

GitHub Issues — Add labels: hai:ai-led, hai:collaborative, hai:human-led. Use custom fields for size and spec quality.

Jira — Create custom fields: Work Mode (select), Involvement (select), Size (select), Spec Quality (select).

Notion — Add database properties: Work Mode (select), Involvement (select), Size (select), Spec Quality (select).

Spreadsheet — Add columns for each dimension. This is the minimum viable implementation and it works.

Tip: Start with just Work Mode and Size if six fields feels like too much. You can add the others as you get comfortable.

Communicate It to Stakeholders

5 min

For clients — Don’t use HAI terminology. Say: “This is a [Size] request. Here’s what’s involved, what we need from you, and the price.”

For partners — Share the full assessment: work mode, involvement, size, spec quality, risk, confidence. This is how you track contributions.

For your team — Share role assignments: “This is collaborative work with engaged involvement. Your role is X, AI handles Y.”

Tip: The goal is transparency, not complexity. Clients don’t need to learn HAI — they need to understand what they’re getting.

Retrospective After Delivery

5 min

Spec quality check — Was the spec good enough? Were there surprises a better spec would have caught? Did ambiguity waste effort?

Assessment accuracy — Did the work mode match reality? Did size change? What information was missing at the start?

Feed it forward — Record the learnings. This is where HAI compounds — every retrospective makes future assessments more accurate.

Tip: This is the most valuable step. Skip everything else before you skip this. The retrospective is where specification skill compounds.

What's Next

You've done one cycle. Now keep going:

Read the full philosophy to understand the values behind HAI Download templates for assessments, communication, and retrospectives Set up HAI fields in your PM tool (GitHub, Jira, Linear, Notion)See how HAI tracked a real platform's development